.TH INTLTOOL-PREPARE 8 "2003-08-02" "intltool"

.SH NAME
intltool-prepare \- Prepare software to make use of intltool

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B intltool-prepare
[\fIoption\fR] [\fI\s-1KEYWORD\s0\fR]...


.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
For software packages that include some specific type of translatable
files (such as .desktop and .soundlist), before they make use of
\fBintltool\fR, translators have to dig through them one by one, and add
their localization into each file. This process is error prone, since
translators may include typing errors, or add their localization in wrong
encoding. Besides, translators may not alwas know other files (beside .po
files) are translatable.
.PP
.I intltool
avoids all the problems above by extracting strings inside those translatable
files into po template (.pot) file. All translators need to care about is
just translating po files. Afterwards, \fBintltool-merge\fR(8) will merge
localized strings into those files.
.PP
Before your software becomes intltool-aware, a few issues have to be sorted
out, and \fBintltool-prepare\fR tries to take care of all of them.
\fBintltool-prepare\fR will:
.IP \[bu] 2
Extract all localized strings in .desktop style files (including ".desktop",
".soundlist", ".keys" and ".directory") into corresponding po files.
.IP \[bu]
Convert the translatable files into templates that don't contain any
localization.
.IP \[bu]
Add the list of template files above into \fBPOTFILES.in\fR.
.IP \[bu]
Add the list of old translatable files into \fB.cvsignore\fR (since they
will be generated by \fIintltool\fR later).
.IP \[bu]
Add the rules for generating these files into Makefile.am.
.PP
NOTE: You must change working directory to the top level source directory
before running \fBintltool-prepare\fR.

.SH OPTIONS
.PP
\fIKEYWORD\fR is a list of additional keywords beside "Name", "Comment" and
"description". \fBintltool-prepare\fR will recognize any line starting with
those \fIKEYWORD\fR and extract localized strings after equal sign ("=").
.IP "\fB\-x\fR" 4
.PD 0
.IP "\fB\-\-verbose\fR" 4
.PD
Be verbose to give user additional feedback.
.IP "\fB\-v\fR" 4
.PD 0
.IP "\fB\-\-version\fR" 4
Show version information.
.IP "\fB\-h\fR" 4
.PD 0
.IP "\fB\-\-help\fR" 4
Show usage and basic help information.


.SH REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to http://bugs.launchpad.net/intltool

.SH AUTHOR
Darin Adler <darin@bentspoon.com>
.br
Kenneth Christiansen <kenneth@gnu.org>
.br
Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@eazel.com>


.SH SEE ALSO
.BR intltoolize (8),
.BR intltool-update (8),
.BR intltool-extract (8),
.BR intltool-merge (8)
